People ask me if I have a five-year plan. How can I plan five years “down the road” on a road I’ve never traveled?

I think back to the 1960s when I was a minister to students at Stanford University. I’d been a physical education major in college and had a lot of fun, but I left no record of being a scholar. I felt wholly inadequate in my new position. Most days I wandered around the campus, a blind man groping in the darkness, asking God to show me what to do. One day a student “out of the blue” asked me to lead a Bible study in his fraternity. It was a beginning. 

God doesn’t stand at a juncture and point the way: He’s a guide, not a signpost. He walks with us, leading us down paths we never envisioned. All we have to do is walk alongside Him. 

The path won’t be easy; there’ll be “rough places” along the way. But God has promised that He will “turn the darkness into light” and “will not forsake” us (Isaiah 42:16). He’ll be with us all the way. 

Paul said that God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20). We can scheme and envision, but our Lord’s imagination far transcends our plans. We must hold them loosely and see what God has in mind.